The US Government is providing a grant of $1.2 million through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) to help enhance peaceful and credible elections in December 2012.

A statement from the Public Affairs Department of the US Embassy said the grant would be used to support a 12-month project on “Civil society interventions toward peaceful and credible elections.”

The USAID-assisted CDD-Ghana project aims at enhancing election transparency and credibility, equality of opportunity, and ensuring that the final results are legitimate and accepted by all parties.

The statement said the agreement would enable CDD-Ghana, in collaboration with the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO), to independently assess activities and events with the objective of strengthening the electoral process in the span of a 12-month period.

CDD-Ghana and CODEO will train and, on polling day, deploy about 4,000 observers to ensure a strong observer presence at randomly selected polling stations countrywide.

In addition, CDD-Ghana and CODEO will observe voting and counting of ballots at the polling stations, collect official polling station results and independently tabulate them to provide another layer of transparency to official election results.

The statement said Ms Cheryl Anderson, USAID/Ghana Mission Director, and Professor Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi, Executive Director of CDD-Ghana, signed the agreement for their respective organisations on Wednesday, March 21 in Accra.

Ms Anderson said: “Americans are delighted to assist in further deepening and strengthening civil society involvement and participation in Election 2012.

We sincerely hope that this contribution will go a long way in strengthening the country’s electoral process for a credible, peaceful, free and fair election.”**